Bosnia and Herzegovina: private and public employment services
Despite recent stability in economic growth in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with 3.2% growth projected for 2018, the country continues to experience an elevated level of unemployment, especially among young people.

To help address these alarming statistics, the governments in Bosnia and Herzegovina are investing substantial resources in promoting employment opportunities. These services comprise mostly job intermediation, such as counseling or job matching, and financial incentives to employers when they hire registered unemployed people. But given the magnitude and persistence of the unemployment problem, there must be other, more effective approaches that could be deployed to complement ongoing practices. One such approach is outsourcing selected employment services to private job brokers.

The World Bank’s recently completed Systematic Country Diagnostic highlights Romania’s vulnerability to natural disasters. Over the years, floods, droughts and earthquakes have cost the country thousands of casualties and billions of euros in damages to physical infrastructure. They have hurt the economy’s productive capacity and disproportionately affected the poor.

A vulnerable country

Countries around the world are already seeing evidence of the damaging impact of climate change, which is making past growth patterns unsustainable and reversing progress made on poverty reduction and shared prosperity.

Saranda stairs.Source: Piotrus
One of my favorite memories from the past summer was discovering Saranda, located in the southern part of the ‘Albanian Riviera.’ I was fascinated by the city’s beautiful location - right on the Ionian Sea coast, with its deep blue waters and with the island of Corfu (Greece) visible on the horizon. I was far from being the only visitor as Saranda is full of people during the summer. In fact, while the usual population is around 35,000, in July and August, this figure can swell with an influx of tourists. During 2016, Saranda registered over 700,000 visitors.

Saranda is not alone in this regard. Over the past years in Albania, tourism has significantly increased, especially in places like Ksamil, Saranda, and Durres. From August 2017 to August 2018, according to the national statistical office, Albania hosted 2.1 million visitors - a 16.8% increase compared to the previous year. And most of these tourists came for the sun and beaches in the summer. These figures are expected to continue to grow in the coming years. On World Tourism Day, the Ministry of Tourism and Environment even indicated that Albania aims to attract 10 million tourists by 2025!

At the World Bank, we know that social inclusion is not only the right thing but also the economically smart thing to do. More inclusive societies are more likely to make the most of their entire stock of human capital. More open and inclusive cities are better placed to attract international capital and talent. More open and inclusive countries make more attractive international tourist destinations.

Jobs and wage growth have been the most important driver of poverty reduction globally, and Central Asia. In Tajikistan, for example, it has cut poverty by about two-thirds since 2003. In Kazakhstan, it accounted for more than three-quarters of income growth over the past decade — even among the poorest 20 percent. The other Central Asian nations have also achieved significant economic growth and poverty reduction in the past two decades due to income growth.

But poverty-reduction rates have slowed. In Kyrgyzstan, they began slowing during the global recession of 2008, as income growth faltered. Poverty reduction in Tajikistan leveled off in 2015, when wage growth slackened and remittances from Tajiks working overseas fell.

In Uzbekistan, more than 90 percent of the poorest households have identified lack of jobs as their most urgent priority. For these families, the prospect of increasing their income is slim, while the likelihood of transmitting poverty to their children is high.

So what should countries in Central Asian do to build on their past achievements and prepare their citizens for the jobs of the future?